Weary refugees keep surging through EU borders

Hungary to deploy army to stop people at border, as Denmark shuts highway to refugees and EU leaders debate quotas.

11 Sep 2015 13:06 GMT

Thousands of weary refugees have continued to share desperate stories of survival as they make their way across Europe's borders, as European Union leaders ramp up the debate about how many people each member state should accept.

On Hungary's border with Serbia, fear and fatigue have overcome many of the refugees, as Budapest prepared to deploy its military to bolster its border and stop people from crossing.

The landlocked central European state is also building a fence to keep the refugees out, but it did not stop hundreds of refugees from scaling the fences and making their way into the country on Wednesday.

Risking everything in Turkey to make it to Europe

Al Jazeera's Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from the border town of Roszke in Hungary on Thursday, said it is unclear when Hungary will deploy the army.

Our correspondent also reported that rainfall has also worsened the situation for refugees stranded at the border, with some of them returning to the Serbia for fear of a crackdown by Hungarian authorities.

"There's so much fear among the refugees, and they are completely uncertain about what will happen on the days to come."

Last Wednesday, Jamjoom reported that some refugees are claiming that they have been abused by authorities.

"For many, the borders hardly matter any more, because it's their pain that can't be escaped," our correspondent said, as he followed several refugees, who were making their way to the border by foot.

For Sabah, a Syrian refugee trying to get to Austria, every day is like torture as she makes her way into Hungary. She told Al Jazeera how she and her husband were beaten by police in Greece.

"When my husband and I got to Greece, a policeman there beat us. He hit my husband and me with a metal stick. I was three months pregnant. I lost my baby."

Human Rights Watch said Hungary has become a place of humiliation for Syrian refugees.

"They are blocked here, they are suffering in the heat, we see children all over the place collapsed in absolute exhaustion," said Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's emergencies director.

"Hungary cannot cope with this influx of asylum seekers, they're not properly treating these people, and they either have to meet their international obligations and their obligations towards the EU or they have to let these people go to where they want to go, which certainly is not Hungary."

Heading to Sweden

Further north in Denmark, authorities have suspended all train services with Germany, after more than 200 refugees refused to disembark from three trains because they did not want to be registered in Denmark.

Refugees have demanded to move northward to Sweden instead.

They were later taken away by volunteers who took them in their cars to their destination, while some refugees tried to reach Sweden on foot along the highway at the Danish-German border.

Danish police later closed the highway.

Sweden has promised to issue residency papers to all Syrian refugees and is a preferred destination for thousands of them fleeing the civil war back home.

Back in Strasbourg, European Union Commission members are set for a battle over how to deal with the influx of people fleeing war, hunger and persecution.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has set out his plan for how many refugees he wants each nation to take. But it is far from clear whether they will agree.

Juncker is calling on member states to agree to provide homes for 160,000 refugees by next year.

But critics say it would not be enough, and Junker himself warned that 500,000 refugees have entered Europe this year, mainly from Syria and Libya.

Juncker is calling on member states to agree to provide homes for 160,000 refugees by next year [AP]